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69 people reported missing after shopping mall fire in Kemerovo

The headquarters said earlier that relatives could not get in touch with 35 people who might have been in the shopping mall at the time

MOSCOW, March 25. /TASS/. About 70 people, including 40 children, are missing after the disastrous fire in a shopping mall in Russia’s Siberian city of Kemerovo, a spokesman for the firefighting operation’s headquarters told TASS on Sunday.

"The number of those reported missing after the shopping mall fire has reached 69. Forty of them are children," he said.

The headquarters said earlier that relatives could not get in touch with 35 people who might have been in the shopping mall at the time.

The fire at the Zimnyaya Vishnya (Winter Cherry) shopping mall in central Kemerovo started on the fourth, top, floor and consumed an area of about 1,600 square meters. Twenty people were saved from the burning building, and some 100 others were evacuated. By now, the fire has been localized. A criminal case was opened.

The shopping mall with an overall area of 23,000 square meters was opened in 2013. It has a parking lot for 250 cars, shops, a bowling, a children’s center, a cinema, and a petting zoo.

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